Tin Soldiers
by Harpokrates
Summary: Pre-series. They were friends, once.


This is my entry for the 'Lost in the Woods' square for tfrarepair Fall 2016 bingo. Bingo!

* * *

"Eyes open, Primal."

Primal looked up from the small reptile he had been intently studying and squinted into the darkness. Depthcharge was staring intently at the distant treeline, red eyes narrowed.

"What is it?" He whispered. He had night vision, yes, it was part of the standard offworld mods, but even on its highest setting, he couldn't see more than twenty meters in front of his face. Heat detection wasn't any good in the jungle—the air was too warm and the reptiles too cool; they just blended together.

"Big lizard. A Lurker. One of the 'bot-biters. If it knows we've seen it, it'll slag off. Just," he crouched over Primal and pointed, "look there for a minute or two."

Primal glanced sidelong at Depthcharge, then returned to scanning the jungle. "And this isn't some ploy so you can get handsy?"

"You think I need a ploy for that?" Depthcharge sounded amused, under the rasp of his voice. "Look, you can see movement."

Primal squinted. Yes, there was something shifting against the silhouette of the trees. He would have passed it off for wind, or simply some small creature rustling the leaves, but Depthcharge was the expert in this.

"Hn," Depthcharge grunted, and returned to standing, "gone. You're safe for another day, Primal."

"My hero," he said drily, and stooped down to tag the reptile—a small six-legged lizard, _Basiliscus edontia_ , with brilliantly colored markings. "I've got to get whatever vision upgrades you have."

"Heh, no upgrades," Depthcharge shrugged, "it's normal aquatic programming. Good for low light."

"How's your color vision?"

"Not bad. Could be better."

"Ah, well," Primal set the lizard free and dusted off his hands. "Can't have everything, I suppose. I—"

An system alert pinged.

"Slag," Primal and Depthcharge cursed simultaneously.

Depthcharge smacked the side of his head. "Your GPS fritz out too?"

"Yes. You know hitting it won't reset anything, right? It's not an internal problem; it's asteroid interference between us and the receiver station on Abrode Luna One."

"Just call it the moon," Depthcharge grunted, "nobody uses the actual name."

"Abrode has twenty four moons, Depthcharge. It's a little confusing to call them all 'the moon'."

"Yeah, but it's clear which moon you're talking about." He jabbed his thumb skyward. "You can only ever see the one."

"Fair enough. Ah," Primal gently tapped his temple. Nothing. "Should we head back?"

"Not until the GPS is back on. If something happens, we're still at our last transmission co-ordinates." He smiled slyly at Primal. "So when we get killed by some escaped psycho, they can recover our bodies."

"Your sense of humor never fails to amuse." Primal rolled his eyes. "Here, help me log the tag IDs."

Primal sat down after checking for any animals and slid open the compartment on his wrist. He had managed to tag nearly thirty lizards—all _B. edontia_ —over the course of the night. Half of the 'tag' remained with him, so he could correlate the ident codes with the animal to which they were attached. They operated on the same system as their GPS, so it went down fairly often. Because of that, the tags stored three rotations—about fifty standard Cybertronian hours—worth of movement data to prevent anything being lost.

Depthcharge handed him the datapad and squatted down next to him. "Still don't see why you have to tag these things. It's not like they'll go offworld."

"It's where they go onworld that we're interested in." Primal explained. " _B. ed_ —finlizards are good environmental indicators. They can't stand high levels of nucleated energon, so if they start dying or leaving the area, we know someone's violating the manufacturing regulations." Primal paused. "I swear I've explained this to you before."

"You have. I wasn't paying attention the first time. Too distracted."

Primal elbowed him.

"Still," he said, "I am seeing fewer finlizards this cycle. A few days of tracking should show us if it's actually smaller numbers, or if I chose a bad night to do this. If it's the former, we'll send a report to your office, and you can go all security chief on them." Primal grinned. Depthcharge didn't laugh.

"Something… wrong?" Primal hazarded.

Depthcharge grunted and stared off into the trees.

"I'm leaving," he said after a minute, "Leaving Abrode. Got a promotion over on one of the new colonies. Omicron, out in Delta space."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

"Well," Primal said slowly, "they'll be lucky to have you. You'll do well out there."

Depthcharge frowned deeply. "Thought you'd start a fight. Make this easier on me."

"Depthcharge, I'm not upset at you for pursuing your dreams, or whatever it is you're doing. What kind of friend would I be if I did that to you?"

Depthcharge didn't answer him.

"Or," realization dawned, "or you just want a reason to leave. There are no loose ends if I cut ties first."

"I'm not good at this," Depthcharge waved an encompassing hand, "emotional stuff, Primal. I normally don't bother to say goodbye. I left Cybertron the second I could. Didn't tell anyone until I was already docked halfway across the galaxy."

"And you didn't do the same thing again?"

Depthcharge snorted. "Bit harder for a security officer to drop everything and bolt. Besides, I've got… friends here. Not just you. I can actually stand my co-workers. I'm shocked."

"Something makes me think you intentionally make yourself harder to like," said Primal mildly, "not that that's particularly difficult in the first place, but still."

"Slag off, Primal."

"After you."

Depthcharge nudged him in the shoulder.

"When did you apply for the job?" Primal asked suddenly.

Depthcharge sucked in air. "When I arrived. I got turned down for the first few—no experience—and then there was an asteroid strike. This was before your science team landed. They needed me for cleanup, and I just stayed after that."

"So why leave now?"

"Been here too long."

"Is that the truth?"

"Not really."

They sat in silence for a long moment. Abrode was still a wild planet. Aside from the small colony and the spaceport, the planet was jungle. It was an important enough waypoint between bigger planets, but had no merits of its own, aside from the natural resources. Wood wasn't exactly coveted among Cybertronians, aside from a few odd artists, but the underlying rock was a rare isotope of promethium. Mining would ruin the planetary biome, and the native species were sapient enough to fall under the Pax Cybertronia Accords. It was still their planet, technically. It was Primal's job to make sure it _remained_ their planet. The distant rumble of thunder echoed under the canopy. Primal's GPS pinged on.

Depthcharge didn't say anything, but his must have been functional too.

He was a creature of excuses, deep down. He loathed responsibility, but he clearly sought it out, like some kind of paroxysmal masochist. No, that was too dramatic, too contrived. Too poetic. He was simply a person, doing what he felt was best. If he was running, then he was running, but he was functionally immortal. He had all the time in the world to sort himself out.

Primal stood up. "I've got ten tags left. Feel like catching lizards?"

Depthcharge shot him a grateful smile, then quickly smothered it under a mask of irritation.

"Sure. Pain in my afterburners though."

"Isn't everything?"

* * *

Today's title comes from Ohio, by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.


End file.
